... The economic importance of the arts is arguably larger, given the non-pecuniary returns to artists and given that art is partially non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa all offer continuing value far in excess of their original market prices, and some current works will follow in their footsteps...

… Beethoven wrote his late string quartets to satisfy his creative urges, knowing the works were too complex to satisfy a wide public audience at the time. Donatello and Michelangelo, perhaps the best-known sculptors from the Italian Renaissance, would walk away from commissions if they could not determine the content of the project. James Joyce chose a level 5 of esoterica for his Finnegans Wake that excluded most of the world’s readers, even intellectually inclined ones. Today, movie stars will sometimes accept a lower cut of the box office if they can work on projects of their own choosing. In a sample of over one thousand U.S. painters, 70 percent reported rejecting on more than one occasion high paying but artistically unfulfilling commissions (Jeffri, 1991)….

… Nineteenth century French cultural activity, for instance, relied heavily upon family funds and bequests. French painters who lived from family wealth include Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Seurat, Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Moreau; the list of writers includes Baudelaire, Verlaine, Flaubert, and Proust…

… Wassall and Alper (1992) found in their survey of contemporary New England artists that 76 percent held part-time jobs. Surveys by Statistics Canada indicate that 60 to 80 percent of the Canadians working in the performing arts also have jobs in other sectors…

… in his study of the Dutch artistic guilds of the seventeenth century, Grampp (1989, 89) notes that young males from rich families tended to apprentice as painters, whereas young males from poorer families tended to apprentice in the more utilitarian field of earthenware design and decoration…

… As government support increases, artists turn away from market sales and art wages fall. Thus, as government support increases, the market appears to become more philistine and the argument for government funding appears stronger…

… An increase in the size of the market creates a dilemma… ‘discovery’ the Missippissi blues guitarist or the South African vocalist, for example, serves only his or her local-home market… The local market might even mean the artist himself, in which case the artist loses nothing by catering solely to his own tastes. When the artist finds an opportunity to sell in the “world” market there are significant incentives to suppress the artist’s own tastes… common perception that some genres are best in their early… We find such claims being made about Delta blues, small combo jazz, and punk music, for example…

… Thus, the Delta blues musician discovered by the teenage-music market is likely to adjust his style more than the newly discovered sculptor. It is not surprising, therefore, that many musicians are said to have “sold out” but few sculptors or painters have been branded by this charge. Andy Warhol, one painter who has been accused of “selling out,” in fact specialized in silkscreen painting, a form whose easy reproducibility he exploited to produce large numbers of multiples or near-multiples…

… Market access, for example, has greatly benefited the Inuit… The combination of a strong outside market for art and a dearth of alternative internal economic opportunities has created artistic havens among the Inuit, the carpet weavers of Persia, and African and Caribbean musicians. The same also may be said for inner-city American blacks who created rap music, break-dancing, hip-hop style and a host of other innovative artistic forms…

… Postulating such motivations is not new in economics. Adam Smith (1981 [1759], p.57) saw the search for approval as “the end of half the labours of human life.” David Hume (1966 [1777], p.114) wrote of the “love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings.”…

… John Cage’s compositions or James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake provide paradigmatic examples… artists prefer these styles for their artistic complexity and novelty… artists may seek approbation from their immediate peers alone…

… Marilyn Monroe has achieved immortal fame, but the shareholders of 22 Paramount have not. Shareholders therefore will more likely pursue outright profit maximization, with little or no regard for non-pecuniary benefits…

… Thus, artistic products tend to fit into money-making popular culture genres when shareholders have a strong influence on the final product, and tend more towards the avant-garde when shareholders are absent or have little influence…

… Fogel (1999) argues that this shift from what he calls “earnwork” to “volwork,” work done in large part for pleasure even if it carries with it some payment, is in fact the major story of economic growth…

… In 1875 it required 1800 hours of labor to earn enough income to feed oneself, today it requires just 260 hours (Fogel, 1999). This effective increase in income is used to purchase “leisure time,” time to do what we like rather than what we must. One application of this general result is that as the wealth of society increases the number of market sales required to support an artist decreases. Thus, the wealthier the society the more liberated the artist…

… Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, and the French Impressionists all relied upon growing propserity to sustain their activities. The great cultural eras of the Eastern powers, China and Japan, also correspond roughly to the relative economic supremacy of these territories. Conversely, low-wage countries, such as twentieth century 25 India and China, usually do not become high culture leaders. Artists in these countries tend to produce for the market rather than for their own tastes hence art from low-wage countries is typically “folk art,” i.e. art which is locally popular… Avant-garde art, a product of recent times, tends to flourish only in extremely wealthy societies… Avant-garde artists such as John Cage or Nam June Paik can earn a living in wealthy capitalist societies…

… Time Cultural commentators (e.g., Gans 1974, Brantlinger 1984, Postman 1985, Bloom 1987, Levine 1988) frequently point out that the modern world is marked by an increasing split between high and low culture. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, the most renowned composers also enjoyed high degrees of popularity. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven were very successful with public audiences, both in the concert arena and with their sheet music. Today we have many renowned composers - Carter, Boulez, Babbitt, and many others - who receive high critical plaudits but have virtually no public audience. At the same time many popular artists - George Michael, Michael Bolton, Paula Abdul - sell millions of recordings but may not pass into the history books or receive critical praise…

… In the 1920s, four of the Pulitzer Prize winners for 26 fiction were among the top ten best selling fiction books in a particular year (the Pulitzer Prize started in 1918). In the 1930s, five Prize winners were best sellers, in the 1940s two were, in the 1950s four were, in the 1960s five were. Since 1968, however, only one Pulitzer Prize winner also has been a best seller (Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift, prize winner in 1976)…